The follow-up to Fairbanks's first volume of memoirs (Salad Days, 1988) finds him as charming and debonair as ever and abrim with tales of his naval service during WW II. Born in 1909, Fairbanks is, of course, the son of movie swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks. Wisely, he reviews his first volume at length for those who haven't read it, and this proves a refreshing first course that sets up the reader for the author's hardships fighting his image as a glamour puss in uniform. With buddy and fellow-actor Robert Montgomery, Fairbanks enlists six months before the war, getting a Reserve commission from Secretary of the Navy Frank Know. Early duty as a deck officer finds him not only a greenhorn but green around the gills with mal de mer. He still moves among the famous when not at sea, being a great good friend of Lord Louis ``Dickie'' Mountbatten, who uses him as an ``American representative'' among the British in his Combined Operations staff for daring raids on Nazi-held Europe, with a grinning but inwardly foot-dragging Fairbanks slotted for amphibious landings. Many of Fairbanks's activities are quite exciting, especially on the beach at Anzio, or on board the US aircraft carrier Wasp, with planes making dangerous landings, or on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. During one run, the worst of the war, only 11 out of 35 merchant ships make it from the States into Russian ports. As for amusement, there's the showing of Fairbanks's last prewar film, The Corsican Brothers, on board the battleship Mississippi, attended by the ship's full company, thrilled and hooting, with Fairbanks red-faced throughout. Most satisfying, and a promised third volume should offer terrific dessert. (Sixteen pages of photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 31, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08807-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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